The leading object, through all our studies, is the elucidation of the fact, that sin has a poisonous effect upon the moral, mental, and physical man, that is in constant action in the direction of deterioration, debasement, ruin, death. Such we teach to be the doctrine of the holy books, spread through the whole volume, elucidated upon every page; that slavery, like a saviour, steps in upon this descending road, arresting the downward progress, the rapid fall to final, to unalterable ruin and death. “If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments,—then will I visit their transgressions with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes.” _Ps._ lxxxix. 30–32. “A righteous man hateth lying: but a wicked man is loathsome, and cometh to shame.” _Prov._ xiii. 5. “Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, return, ye children of men.” _Ps._ xc. 3. “I have therefore delivered unto the mighty one of the heathen; he shall surely deal with him: I have driven him out for his wickedness.” _Ezek._ xxxi. 11. “And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hands of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off; for the Lord hath spoken it.” _Joel_ iii. 8. “Nevertheless they shall be his _servants_ (לַֽעֲבָדִים _slaves_), that they may know my _service_ (עֲב֣וֹדָתִ֔י, and the _service_ (וַֽעֲבוֹדַ֖ת, _slavery_) of the kingdoms of the countries.” 2 _Chron._ xii. 8. “The show of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Wo unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.” _Isa._ iii. 9. “Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge; and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.” “And the mean man shall be brought down, and the mighty man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled: but the Lord of hosts shall be exalted in judgment, and God that is holy shall be sanctified in righteousness.” _Isa._ v. 13, 15, 16. Dr. Channing’s book before us goes on to specify this debasement as to the intellect; its influence on the domestic relations; how it “produces and gives license to cruelty.” The fact that debasement reaches all these points, we agree to; nay, further, that it reaches to every act and thought. But we refer all these displays of debasement to the result of the degradation, of which slavery is only the moral, the natural consequence. If we find a man debased as to one thing, it is in conformity with the common sense of mankind to expect to find him debased as to another.